Part of Old Fire reward given after almost 10 years

View: Reward letter and check A $60,000 check has been cut for the great-great aunt of convicted Old Fire arsonist Rickie Lee Fowler -- San Bernardino County's share of a $110,000 reward offered in 2003 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for causing the county's most devastating wildfire, officials said Friday.

The check was mailed Thursday to Elizabeth Rehkop of Grass Valley, who tipped off sheriff's investigators in December 2003 to Fowler's possible involvement in the fire and testified at his trial last year, county spokesman David Wert said.

The county put up a $50,000 reward in October 2003 and a private individual who chose to remain anonymous offered a $10,000 reward, to be disbursed through the county.

Stater Bros. Markets also put up a $50,000 reward, but the county told Rehkop in its letter Thursday that Stater Bros. would be issuing her a separate check.

Rehkop, 63, said she became aware of the award last year through Fowler's attorney and began a letter-writing campaign to the Sheriff's Department, the County Administrative Office and Stater Bros. She said she started to feel she was being stonewalled due to the delays in response from the county.

"I did feel like I was being put off and they were hoping I would go away," Rehkop said Friday in a telephone interview. "I'm glad that they're doing the right thing."

Wert said in an email Friday that doling out the reward money was a very long, involved process that required review and recommendations from both the sheriff and district attorney. In addition, the matter required vetting from the County Administrative Office, a review by county attorneys, and then ultimately consideration and approval by county CEO Greg Devereaux and county Auditor-Controller Larry Walker.

A jury convicted Fowler, 31, in August 2012 of murder and arson in connection with the Old Fire, which ignited in Waterman Canyon in late October 2003 and over a week's time spread across the San Bernardino Mountains, destroying nearly 1,000 homes and contributing, according to authorities, to the deaths of five men.

It was the deadliest wildfire in county history.

Fowler was sentenced to die and is now on San Quentin's Death Row.

But Fowler's fate remains in limbo, as the death penalty in California was suspended in 2006 by a federal judge who determined the process in which condemned inmates were executed was flawed and that new procedures were needed. The moratorium remains in effect as attorneys for condemned inmates continue battling it out with the state over whether death by lethal injection constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment."

Rehkop said Fowler's younger sister was living with her in December 2003 and that she said her brother may have had something to do with the Old Fire.

"I was taking her to visit her mother and she told me that word on the street was that he had something to do with it," Rehkop said. "I believed her and talked to her mother about it, and her mother confirmed that's what was being heard on the street."

Rehkop said she learned Fowler was heavily in debt to his methamphetamine supplier, who was threatening harm to Fowler and his family. So, Fowler retaliated by hurling a lighted flare at the house of his drug dealer off Old Waterman Canyon Road, Rehkop said.

The flare ignited tinder-dry brush and quickly spread across the mountains, fueled by arid, seasonal winds and a confluence of natural disasters including seven consecutive years of drought and an unprecedented bark-beetle infestation that killed more than a million pine trees in the San Bernardino National Forest.

Rehkop, a former Nevada County, Calif., sheriff's deputy, said she felt it was her duty to report her information to authorities, who took her tip seriously.

Investigators recorded three conversations Rehkop had with Fowler while he was in jail, and Rehkop testified at Fowler's trial last year.

Even though she helped convict Fowler, Rehkop maintains contact with him in prison.

"I handed down my son's clothes to him. I love Rickie," Rehkop said. "He never had a chance in life. His father was giving him methamphetamine when he was 8 years old. It's the sickest situation I could imagine."

She said she plans to use some of the reward money to help Fowler in prison.

"I will continue to keep him supplied with things like stamps and stationery and a book every now and then, and hygiene products," Rehkop said.

She said Fowler was never equipped with the tools to lead a productive, normal life, and poses a danger to society because of the hand he was dealt in life.

"He's just a very lost soul who would be dangerous on the outside," Rehkop said. "I hate to say it, but I do believe that prison is the best place for him."